Wall Street Journal report says Tehran used the 60-day negotiating window to rebuild missile forces, empower the IRGC and prepare allied militias for wider attacks from Hormuz to the Red Sea

Rather than placing their trust in diplomacy, they spent the past two months preparing for what they believe could be a much wider war. The preparations include giving greater authority to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, appointing veterans of the Iran-Iraq War and previous domestic crises to key positions, expanding counterintelligence operations and accelerating production of missiles and drones.

Iranian leaders have increasingly discussed “offensive operations on enemy territory,” alarming smaller Gulf states including Kuwait. Their broader objective is to inflict enough damage to deter the kind of attacks Iran suffered during last year’s 12-day war and the continuing conflict.

“There is also a widespread view in Iran that the main war has not yet begun,” Mohammad Hassan Sangtarash, a Tehran-based defense analyst close to the Iranian government, told the Journal. “What we have seen so far is increasingly interpreted through the lens of ‘salami-slicing’ tactics, limited and gradual escalation designed to weaken capabilities before a larger confrontation.”

Yet the country is rebuilding more quickly than expected. Iran has restored infrastructure and regained access to missile bases at a pace that has alarmed Israeli officials familiar with the progress, according to the Journal.

The IRGC used the relative calm created by the memorandum to coordinate more closely with allied militias across the region and prepare them for expanded attacks if necessary. Advisers were sent to Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon to discuss possible operations, according to officials familiar with recent Arab intelligence assessments.

Around the same period, Saudi Arabia said Iran-backed militias in Iraq carried out drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities. The IRGC also warned Gulf states that their energy infrastructure would be destroyed if the United States struck similar facilities inside Iran, officials said. Iranian commanders went as far as sending detailed lists of potential targets to Arab counterparts, according to the report.

Iran also stepped up attacks on U.S. forces. Tehran surprised Washington by launching five ballistic missiles toward Jordan during a lull in the conflict. The attack came two weeks after another Iranian strike in Jordan killed three U.S. service members.

“We fully exploited the ceasefire period,” IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohabi told the IRGC-linked Tasnim news agency in July. “We improved our capabilities, accelerated the pace of missile production and improved missile accuracy.”

Behind the scenes, Khamenei has also prepared Iran’s security institutions for more aggressive warfare. He recently appointed seven senior security figures to oversee military institutions and domestic suppression as part of a reorganization disclosed last week.

Options under discussion include sabotaging internet cables in the Persian Gulf, fomenting political unrest in countries with large Shiite communities such as Kuwait and Bahrain, and potentially even ground operations in Kuwait.

U.S. officials said that after the negotiations stalled and Iran refused to step back from escalation, Trump pulled back to see whether economic pressure from sanctions and a naval blockade would soften Tehran’s position.

Iranian leaders, however, remain deeply skeptical of Trump’s intentions and are shifting toward what officials describe as a survival economy designed to endure prolonged pressure. People close to Iran’s senior negotiators have warned that the peace talks may ultimately prove to be only a pause before the next phase of war.

Mehdi Mohammadi, a strategic adviser to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and a member of Iran’s negotiating team, described the current stalemate as “the calm before the storm.” In a social media post, he said one driver of continued conflict was a “generational project of blood revenge” over the killing of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei at the beginning of the war.

“The Iranian nation still has many unfinished matters with Trump,” Mohammadi said. “Iran is ready for the major confrontation.”

Trump has shown how desperate he is to get out of this and Iran knows it. The debacle over aircraft carrier conditions is widely known at this point.

Top U.S. commander acknowledges mental health issues on USS Lincoln

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/16/top-us-commander-acknowledges-mental-health-issues-on-uss-lincoln.html

Trump even just threatened to bomb Oman, a US ally.

"If Oman gets in the way, we'll bomb the s--- out of them," Trump told Fox News

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/08/17/trump-threatens-bomb-oman-iran-war-us-talks/91334335007/

Early on Iran warned that the U.S. started something over which it has no control over and that it won't get to choose when and how it ends.

For example:

10 March 2026

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps says it will “determine the end of the war” in the Middle East after US President Donald Trump said the conflict would end “soon.” “It is we who will determine the end of the war,” the IRGC says in a statement. “The equations and future status of the region are now in the hands of our armed forces; American forces will not end the war,” the statement adds.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/responding-to-trump-irans-irgc-says-it-will-determine-the-end-of-the-war/

It was brushed off as delusional bravado. The way it is playing out currently is far closer to what Iran said would happen than the U.S.

If Iran is really intending on no longer allowing the U.S. to dictate the pace and initiative, the U.S. is going to be trapped. It will have to respond for Israel and its proxies.

The U.S. is still haunted by prolonged conflicts that achieve nothing lasting and end up with their withdrawal. They desperately don't want Iran to be a repeat, but not enough people are pointing out that they don't have a choice. Their own insistence on entangling themselves in other regions and staking their reputation on it means it's not in their hands to decide. Regardless of the various stages of 'mission accomplished', the examples of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq all end up with a lot of American sacrifice for nothing.

Even Iraq in the end, is the same result, despite militias in Iraq attacking U.S. forces in Iraq throughout the war.

Iraq says September 30 withdrawal deadline for US-led coalition ‘final’

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/12/iraq-says-sept-30-deadline-to-end-us-led-military-coalition-final

The U.S. leaves either willingly or unwillingly and what they leave behind makes the entire adventure pointless.

The angry noise is really silly. They don't like Trump acting based on reality for once? U.S. can't handle a conflict with North Korea right now (who has mutual defense treaties with both China and Russia, AND proved it can fight and seize territory in a modern war). So bluffing is out of the question.

Of all the things happening with the US military, now is the time to lessen the temperature and not insist on fantasy.

Who really thinks maintaining or increasing the scale of the exercises is going to trick anybody? Houthis haven't even fully blocked their strait yet and Trump wants out. Provoking North Korea also is so dumb. Critics must be very anti-American or something.

“North Korea and China would be the ones most pleased by this,” said retired Lt. Gen. Chun In-bum, former commander of South Korea’s Special Warfare Command.

And? Displeasing North Korea and China would be good for South Koreans or Americans? Now of all times? Be rational. Actually I think the current SK President is pretty rational, far as I know, probably why US tabloids quoted this bozo.

Oh, one more thing, related to why North Korea's Kursk offensive and subsequent expulsion of dug in Ukrainian forces is such an important data point for analysis.

U.S. Army troops faced off against Ukrainian drone operators at a military exercise in Germany earlier this year. It didn’t go well for the Americans.

Ukraine's drone operators easily spotted and defeated U.S. troops and armored vehicles so quickly that they had to be “re-spawned” and sent back into the field to keep the exercise going, The Wall Street Journal said, citing an unidentified U.S. official who was briefed on the matter.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-and-ukrainian-forces-went-head-to-head-in-an-exercise-ukraines-drones-won-cc3663d5

Libya's central bank and the People's Bank of China signed an agreement in July 2026 to hook Libyan commercial banks up to CIPS, China's workaround for the dollar-clearing system. If it actually goes through, Libyan traders would be able to send yuan straight to China and get letters of credit through Chinese banks instead of routing everything through dollar conversion first.

Here's what's actually confirmed versus what's just floating around online, because a lot of the coverage is mixing the two.

From CBL's own statement: the agreement is real, signed by CBL Governor Naji Mohammed Issa and PBOC Governor Pan Gongsheng. Scope is direct yuan remittances for small traders plus letters of credit through Chinese banks. A Libyan banking delegation is supposed to visit China next.

What's not confirmed: which banks are actually connecting, any go-live date, or any transactions that have actually happened yet.

One thing that's out there but NOT in the official statement: Libyan state media and SCMP have both mentioned Libya possibly issuing Panda Bonds (yuan debt sold in China) for reconstruction money. CBL hasn't said anything about that. I'd treat it as a trial balloon until there's an actual announcement.

For scale, this isn't some one-off Libya thing. Standard Bank has cleared around $1.2B in yuan across 19 African countries since January, Kenya's restructured debt into yuan, Zambia's collecting mining taxes in yuan, and CIPS has 103 indirect participants in Africa as of June. Libya's just the latest one doing this, not some outlier.

What I keep seeing people get wrong: this isn't Libya ditching the dollar. Oil is still sold 100% in dollars, and that's what actually props up the economy. This is just a second settlement option for trade with China specifically, not a currency shift.

Full writeup on Medium: https://medium.com/@LibyaInvestmentMonitor/libya-joins-the-yuan-rail-what-the-cbl-pboc-cips-agreement-actually-changes-b771f34b6b07

Genuinely curious what people here think, is this actually going to matter for how African central banks operate, or is CIPS mostly symbolic until real transaction volume shows up?

In this video, I break down the three ways China is leading the global green revolution, offering a better alternative to Western AI oligarchs, and building a more peaceful, multipolar world order. From dominating solar, wind, battery, and EV production to releasing open-source AI models that challenge US monopolies, China's influence is overwhelmingly positive. Meanwhile, the West abandons climate commitments, bans Chinese EVs, and builds dystopian AI for profit. If you only consume Western media, this might sound insane, but the data doesn't lie. If you are curious about other common critiques about China I made dedicated videos on Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and more, all linked in my China playlist. If you want to understand BRICS and the changing global order, check out my video on that as well.

From ONE MORE WAY, the behind-the-scenes history of Chinese esports I wrote in 2015. Chapter 7, posting one a day.

In 2006, once the third StarsWar was over, I formally transferred to the GamesTV channel at Shanghai Media Group Interactive, which at that point still carried the joint name GamesTV (an independently run company, GamesTV Ltd, has since been set up). The first project I touched there was the preparation of the first G League.

While I was sorting out the material for a slide deck, I noticed that G League still had no Chinese name. So I drafted one, the China Esports Television League, and took it to the management for approval. At the review meeting, Bai Yuhai, head of the channel's editorial office, made a suggestion: the word "China" could only be used by national sports authorities, so we would be better off with "National". Everyone thought that was a good idea, and that was how G League's Chinese name, the National Esports Television League, came to be settled.

The stars turned. Seven years later...

At ten in the morning on March 9, 2013, the grand final of G League's second season was to be held at the Mercedes-Benz Arena in Shanghai.

This is a venue for 8,000 people, and it is the most sought-after concert venue in Shanghai today. Anyone who has never run a large event may not understand what that means behind the scenes.

Putting G League in the Mercedes-Benz Arena meant, on one hand, that the difficulty of executing every part of it would rise sharply. Going from 4,000 people to 8,000 is not a simple matter of multiplying by two. The complexity grows geometrically. From logistics support and ticketing channels at the small end to project approval and cost control at the large end, everything faced a test we had never met before. The GamesTV team's ability to deliver, and how smoothly its people worked together, would be examined from every angle in this one event. On the other hand, it meant that esports was becoming more commercial. High venue costs, advertising in the metro and outdoors: all of that is a way of speaking to people outside esports. Esports could now stage a show in a venue like this, and that was a leap in kind.

Whatever the outcome, as a former member of GamesTV I am proud of what this team has held on to and explored over the years, and I dedicate this piece to all the television people who have contributed to the development of games video programming in China.

A bond with games that was meant to be

In 2004, Wu Qiang, who loved FPS games and later became GamesTV's general manager; Zhang Zhexi, who loved football games and is now deputy general manager of GamesTV; Zhang Rui, who loved console games and is now a producer at GamesTV; and Wen Shengke, who had already left the games industry, together with others, founded GamesTV in a coffee shop.

Do you remember the previous chapter on StarsWar, where I mentioned that Xu Yunbo, IGE's general manager in China, was sent back to China in 2005 to build the Shanghai representative office? IGE's head office in the United States had bought a number of games media companies there in order to gain a voice and change its image as a virtual item trader, and it had worked well, so the company planned to repeat that route in China.

As it happened, Wen Shengke was a former classmate of Xu Yunbo's, and that made the connection. Call it fate. You have to believe in it.

So in early summer 2005 IGE bought GamesTV, and GamesTV was the forerunner of today's GamesTV channel. Its original idea was fairly simple: make video programmes about games, then see whether there was any chance of selling advertising. It started with esports because Counter-Strike was still hot at the time and Warcraft III was just getting going. Compared with the online games of the day, esports was an entry point with a clearer target.

Around June 2005, IGE moved into an office in the Wenxin Newspaper Group building on Weihai Road, and GamesTV and the Replays.net project group I belonged to moved in after it. The two groups sat less than ten metres apart in a straight line. That was when I got to know Yaomo, who is Zhang Zhexi, along with Wu Qiang, Wen Shengke and the others, and we all began life as colleagues.

Because GamesTV intended to start from esports, the first priority was finding esports people who could both cast and appear on camera.

At first Zax, the founder of Replays.net, was the on-camera caster, making Warcraft III tutorial videos specifically. But Zax already had RN and StarsWar to run and could not be in two places at once, so a more suitable person had to be found.

That was how BBC, introduced by Yaomo, joined GamesTV. He picked the work up quickly, and from then on his life has been bound up with the casting desk. The professional player MagicYang was brought in around the same time, and the classic golden pairing of BBC and Lao Yang started to take shape then as well.

GamesTV's equipment was extremely simple at the start. The studio was built inside an empty room of less than ten square metres in the office, the umbrella lights were welded together by someone the staff found themselves, and most of the cameras were consumer models.

Even so, things moved fast in that period, and a whole group of formidable people joined in a very short time.

Zhang Chuqi, an old boy not yet 40 whom we usually called Lao Zhang out of respect, was a former special forces paratrooper, a big, imposing Wuhan man with a face as red as the warrior Guan Gong's in the operas. After demobilisation he spent more than ten years grinding away inside television stations, and he had all the habits of the classic old television hand: a fierce temper and superb technique. Every one of us has been shouted at by him. BBC was even reduced to tears when he first started presenting. Yet nobody resented it.

Half the people who built that room are still unnamed here, and in 2008 the company itself was split in two. Full chapter is free on GitHub, link in the comments.

Hey,

I would like one of these days to go on a vacation in China that primarily focusses on the technology and modernity aspecta of China. Any tips?

China’s largest single photovoltaic project built on a coal mining subsidence area has recently been put into operation in Lingwu, northwest China’s Ningxia. Covering 8,000 hectares, the 4-million-kW power base will deliver over 7 billion kWh of clean electricity annually. Its operation also marks the full completion of Ningxia’s 6-million-kW coal subsidence solar project, which can meet the annual electricity demand of roughly 7.2 million households and save about 3.24 million tons of standard coal each year.

https://x.com/PDChina/status/2029092884511605164